


Neil Josten the Sex God

by manya



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Bad Flirting, Eden's Twilight, M/M, Meet-Cute, andrew has a crush and he's not happy about it, as cute as it gets for these two anyway lmao, matt is trying his best to be a wingman, neil is pretty and andrew is useless
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-17
Updated: 2018-10-17
Packaged: 2019-08-03 15:40:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,363
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16328816
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/manya/pseuds/manya
Summary: “Okay, look. My friends were kinda getting on my back about me being single, and I said that it was by choice and if I wanted to I could get anyone I wanted. And obviously that’s an extremely presumptuous thing to say, so they told me to prove it. So, uh, here I am. And here you are. And if you’d like to maybe help me out with this, that would be awesome.”Andrew stares at Neil for a moment that seems to stretch on forever. “You want me to play along with you and pretend that you’re some kind of sex god?”





	Neil Josten the Sex God

Andrew didn’t know if he was getting older or if the scene at Eden’s Twilight was getting duller; what he did know was that sitting at the table and watching Aaron and Nicky fail at dancing while Kevin tried to yell at them over the music about a book he had just finished was quickly becoming less ‘boring’ and more ‘aggravating’.

When it became apparent that Aaron and Nicky were steadfastly ignoring him, Kevin turned to stare at him with a pronounced pout. Andrew gave him a warning look, but Kevin paid him no heed and staggered back over to the table. He sat with so much force that he nearly went tumbling off his stool, and Andrew made no move to right him. Disappointingly, Kevin managed to keep his balance and sat up (mostly) straight. “Andrew,” he said, glaring blearily at him, “Andrew.”

“What.” Andrew forced the words out through gritted teeth. Times like these had him really questioning why he put himself through these trips to Eden’s every goddamn week (that question was usually answered in the looseness of Aaron’s shoulders and the easiness of Nicky’s laugh and even goddamn Kevin’s bright-eyed rants about whatever had caught his attention that week when they were surrounded by the familiar surroundings of the pounding music and flashing lights).

“I was trying to tell the others about how Marie Antoinette was _villainised_ -”

Andrew swept himself to his feet, and scowled down at Kevin in all his five-feet glory. When he was greeted with the same disappointed pout, he said “I’m getting more drinks” and Kevin’s face melted into a look of contented expectation.

He ignored the drink orders that were called after him as he made his way to the bar, but they all knew he’d bring them back what they wanted anyway. The crowd of people parted easily around him as his elbows carved out a path through squirming bodies. By the time he reached the bar he was breathing heavily and trying hard to hide it; he hated to think that Kevin might have had a point about his smoking habit ruining his lungs.

“More of the same?” Roland called. The heat behind the bar had his hair curling up at the ends, and Andrew watched a droplet of sweat slide down his neck and beneath his shirt. He entertained the notion of slipping into the back room with Roland after he dropped the drinks back at the table; his group were too giddy to notice his absence, and he knew that Roland would ask.

“Kevin wants a triple vodka cranberry.” was all he said. Roland nodded and set about mixing the drinks, and Andrew settled against the bar to wait.

The tray was only half full of drink when another body settled next to Andrew’s, far enough to not be entirely invasive, but close enough for the intent to be unmistakable. Looking up, Andrew is met with large blue eyes and shiny red curls that reflect the pulsating lights from the dance floor.

“Hi there.” the stranger smiles. It’s a charming smile for sure, but it’s obvious that the intention behind it is to be charming. Andrew isn’t convinced; despite the attractive face, it’s clear that the guy doesn’t really smile that often. The expression looks complicated and uncomfortable on him.

Andrew raises an eyebrow in lieu of replying, just to be difficult. The guy is good-looking - really good-looking, if Andrew is going to be honest with himself. Since he’s not in the habit of lying to himself, he takes in the pretty eyes, straight teeth, and interesting scars along his left cheekbone. Then he takes all that interest and shoves it down deep where it won’t bother him.

The lack of reply seems to set the guy on edge, because he looks briefly to the dancefloor and then quickly back to Andrew. “I’m Neil,” he says. The uncomfortable smile is still on his face, and it’s starting to become irritating.

“What do you want?” Andrew checks on Roland’s progress with the drinks, but it looks like he’s gotten distracted with another customer further up the bar.

“Uh,” the guy’s smile flickers for a moment, and then drops completely. He leans in close, and Andrew hates himself for getting distracted by the swell of his bottom lip, “Okay, look. My friends were kinda getting on my back about me being single, and I said that it was by choice and if I wanted to I could get anyone I wanted. And obviously that’s an extremely presumptuous thing to say, so they told me to prove it. So, uh, here I am. And here you are. And if you’d like to maybe help me out with this, that would be awesome.”

Andrew stares at Neil for a moment that seems to stretch on forever. Neil stares back with no signs of the discomfort that people usually display when he maintains eye contact for too long. “You want me to play along with you and pretend that you’re some kind of sex god?”

Neil flushes a gratifyingly bright pink. “I never said I was-”

“So what do you want me to do?” Andrew interrupts. His eyes are fixed on Neil’s rosy cheeks. The alcohol and the heat are making him stupid, he thinks.

Neil cuts himself off with a sharp inhale, and stares at Andrew in mild disbelief. “Wait. You’ll play along?”

Andrew leans on the bar and tilts his head to the side. “You’d better get this show on the road in case your friends begin to get suspicious, hm?”

That makes Neil shoot another look at the dance floor; this time Andrew catches a glimpse of the massive guy with ridiculous hair that shoots an enthusiastic thumbs up in their direction. Neil smiles back at him, but this one is small and wavering. Andrew likes it better; this one is real.

“There we go.” Roland announces as he sets the last of the drinks on the tray and pushes it in Andrew’s direction. His eyes flick curiously between him and Neil, before he raises his eyebrows at Andrew and leans against the bar.

When Andrew shakes his head, Roland takes it as the answer it is and moves on to serve other patrons further down the bar. When Andrew looks back to Neil, he finds that Neil hasn’t taken his eyes off him. “Quit staring,” he says “and tell me what you want from me.”

“Your, um,” suddenly Neil doesn’t seem so confident at all, and can’t quite make eye contact, “Your phone number, maybe?”

Andrew takes one of the shots on the tray and throws it back; it’s the only way he’ll get out of this situation still sane. He doesn’t even know why he’s entertaining this guy, until he looks back at him and gets an eyeful of those big blue eyes and stupid freckles and then it becomes very obvious indeed. “Give me your phone then,” he snaps, and it comes out harsher than he had intended.

Neil doesn’t seem to take offense, and he scrambles to search his pockets and then to hand his phone over. He obviously attempted to match Eden’s Twilight’s theme; his jeans look like they’ve been painted on and his shirt is constructed with a mixture of mesh and sheer black panels. Andrew can see scars, but he pointedly doesn’t look; he wonders if Neil dressed himself or if somebody else picked those clothes for him.

He briefly considers entering a fake number, but maybe the alcohol has affected him more than he had originally thought because the number he ends up saving into Neil’s phone is the same one he’s had for six years now. When he hands the phone back, Neil looks down at the saved contact details and says “Andrew.” His mouth moves slow and exaggerated around the letters, as if it’s his first time ever coming across the name.

Andrew swallows. “Is that all?”

“I don’t know.” Neil confesses, and shuffles closer. “What is it that sex gods usually do?”

If Andrew was smart, this would be the moment that he would step away from this frustratingly intriguing and stupidly pretty boy, and go back to his family with their drinks in hand. He would sit in silence and watch his people as they danced and got drunk and acted stupid, and then he would herd them into the car and back to the house and into bed. It was a routine. It was safe.

But Andrew isn’t as smart as he thinks he is, and so he says, “You’re an idiot. I don’t know if that makes me want to kiss you or shove you off a tall building.”

That, at the very least, seems to take Neil by surprise. His eyes widen, dark lashes almost touching his eye socket, and his mouth drops into a little ‘o’ shape. It only takes himself a minute to pull himself together, and then he’s looking at Andrew with a wicked grin that is at once light years better than the first two smiles he has seen and so, so, _so_ much worse because this grin does _something_ to Andrew on the inside. “Can I pick?”

“No.”

“Shame.” Neil’s eyes drop down to Andrew’s mouth, and then quickly flick back up.

Andrew narrows his eyes. He hates that he’s going to ask, but he knows he’ll probably hate himself more if he doesn’t. “You said you were single.” It comes out less like the question he intended it to be and more like an irrefutable statement of fact.

“Yeah.”

Andrew warred with himself for a long moment; Neil is silent, watching him and giving him the space to sort out what it was he wanted to say. It was rare for people to offer him that kind of consideration. He hated it. “Why?”

Neil blinks slowly, apparently surprised by the question. “Nobody’s caught my eye, I guess. I don’t really look at people like that.”

 _Ah._ Of course. Andrew nods stiffly, viciously squashing down anything that even feels remotely like disappointment, because that’s a stupid thing to be feeling right now. He’s only exchanged a short conversation with this stupid pretty stranger; the fact that he respected his personal space and gave him time to think before speaking and flirted and smiled were completely coincidental.

“Your friend is getting worried.” he says for lack of anything else to say.

Neil glances over his shoulder at the big guy, but just waves his hand nonchalantly. “Matt’s not worried. Hovering is his way of being supportive.”

“Well,” says Andrew, “I think he believes you now.”

“You think so?”

“You got my number, didn’t you?”

“Mmm,” says Neil, and twists his phone in his hand. “Can I ask you a question?”

“Only if you ask it quickly.”

“If I asked you on a date, what would you say?”

Andrew is quite sure that his eyebrows have risen so high that they’ve disappeared into his hairline. He violently beats down that little thing that felt almost like a _flutter_ because _no_ , he is _not_ dealing with that. Instead he asks, “I thought you didn’t look at people in that way.”

Neil shrugs, a little self-conscious. “Not usually,” he confesses, “But, um. There’s a reason I came to talk to you, ah, specifically.” When Andrew doesn’t immediately reply, he hurries to continue, “We don’t have to go on a date if that makes you uncomfortable. We can do something simpler. We can, uh, just talk? Or I can walk away and we can both pretend this never happened-”

“Stop talking.”

Neil ceases at once. Andrew tries not to notice how well Neil respects his wishes, but it’s futile at this point. It’s like someone has dialled up all his senses and aimed them right at the man in front of him. He’s impossible to ignore.

Andrew takes one of those deep, stupid yoga breaths that Renee taught him. It’s supposed to centre his mind, or something, but instead it just makes him look like an idiot that can’t breathe properly. He abandons his yoga breathing immediately. “I am going to go back to my table now.”

It’s strange, how fast Neil’s face falls. Stranger still is how fast that disappointment is covered over by smooth impassiveness; he’s had practice at that. Andrew knows the skill needed for that particular trick intimately. He’s a little surprised, really, by how much hope had actually been building up in Neil’s face. He hadn’t noticed until it had been wiped out by that still expression that occupied his pretty face.

Andrew picks up the tray and hefts it over one shoulder. Before he leaves, he looks Neil right in the eyes. “You have my number.”

“I can delete it, if you want.”

“If I wanted you to delete it I wouldn’t have given it to you in the first place.”

“Okay.” Neil stares at him uncomprehendingly, and Andrew’s jaw clenches. He’s really going to have to spell it out for this asshole.

“Call me.” the words are ground out between gritted teeth, and he probably makes it sound more like a threat than an offer, but it has Neil brightening up so fast it’s jarring.

“Yeah,” breathes Neil, eyes rounder than ever, “Okay.”

Andrew has to leave before he says something even more stupid, but he supposes the damage is done.

After he deposits the drinks at their table and warns Kevin off complaining about how long he took, he sits down and looks back across the dancefloor. Nicky and Aaron have returned to the table and are downing more shots, but Andrew looks past them.

Neil has been pulled onto the dancefloor by his large friend, and Andrew isn’t surprised (and definitely isn’t endeared) to find that Neil is an altogether graceless and awkward dancer.

(If, when he catches Andrew’s eyes across the crowded club, he puts more effort into his movements, then that’s nobody's business)

(And if, the next morning, the text waiting for Andrew from an unknown number hurriedly saved makes him smile for the first time in many long, countless days, then that’s nobody’s business either)


End file.
